Whatever Price I'll Have To Pay
by Mondhase
Summary: Sequel to "Whatever It Is You Are Called Upon To Do", which takes an alternative direction from the final story arc of season 1, starting with "Providence". Ward is working as a double agent for Maria Hill, trying to take HYDRA down from the inside, while doing his best to protect his friends and his own humanity in the process.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Sequel to my story "Whatever It Is You Are Called Upon To Do", taking an alternative direction from the final story arc of season 1, starting with "Providence". Ward is still a double agent (or is that a triple agent now?) working for HYDRA on Maria Hill's orders, trying to take it down from the inside, while doing his best to protect his friends and his own humanity in the process.

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><p><strong>Whatever Price I'll Have To Pay<strong>

**Chapter 1**

You couldn't kill HYDRA by cutting off its head, that much Ward had known from the beginning. No, you had to set it on fire and burn it to the ground to make sure that every part of it would be completely destroyed, but if he was being honest, the specialist had not expected the end of the evil organisation to be quite so literal.

As he was making his way through the burning building, on his way to face the man who had set all of this in motion, even if involuntarily, Agent Ward had no illusions about the outcome of this confrontation. But as long as he managed to kill John Garrett – for Skye, for Fitz, and for himself – he didn't care that he was going to die with him.

He would never leave this building again, wouldn't get another chance to see his old team, his former friends, and apologise to them, nor see the result of everything he had done over the past few months to bring HYDRA down for good. But all of that was okay as he knew that he didn't deserve any of it anyway.

He had killed too many people, too many good agents, to get out of this alive. He had put his own team, those who had trusted him unconditionally, through hell, and even though they would soon know the truth and might even find it within themselves to forgive him, he never would. He had sacrificed all of himself to destroy HYDRA, his reputation, his honour, his friends and even the woman he loved, it was only fitting that he sacrificed his life now as well.

Maybe he had helped to create a new world, a better one even, but he sure as hell didn't belong in it anymore, because he knew he was no better than the people he had been fighting all this time.

**To be continued…**

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><p>AN: The next chapters will be considerably longer, but I'm not sure yet how long the whole story is going to be. Probably longer than "Whatever It Is You Are Called Upon To Do", but it's not going to be as massive as "So Long" or some of my other fanfics.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Most of this will be very familiar, with the dialogue taken directly from the show, but I think that Ward's POV puts a new perspective to what happened as he tries to balance his loyalties.

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><p>A thousand 'Thank you!' to <strong>jennyhale<strong> (yes, of course it's Ward), **Oricke**, **dragonball256** and **TheAsgardianQueen **fortakingthe time to review and to everyone who favorited or followed the story! I'll try to post the next chapter sooner and you guys definitely keep me going.

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><p><strong>Whatever Price I'll Have To Pay<strong>

**Chapter 2**

Even now as his fight against HYDRA was almost over and Ward was on his way to Garrett, there was a list of numbers, names and faces running through his head, that was haunting him every day, reminding him of how high the price for this victory had been.

Ever since Garrett had one of his own men killed for asking the wrong questions, after Ward had tipped him off about that, the specialist had been keeping count of all the people he had killed, or for whose death he had been responsible in the name of HYDRA, either still as a loyal follower or to maintain his cover.

_One._ Dan Monroe, a loyal SHIELD agent and father to a six year old son, who had made the mistake of trusting him to advise him on how to handle his suspicions about Garrett. He hadn't meant for anything to happen to the agent, when he had told his former S.O. about his call, but he might as well have pulled the trigger himself.

_Two. Three._ Two more of Garrett's agents apparently killed on the hunt for Ian Quinn, but Ward had known better. He wasn't sure if the two men had already had suspicions about their boss before the death of their team member, but as the 'Clairvoyant' had ordered the hit on them shortly after that, it was obvious the incidents were connected, meaning that those were two more deaths that Ward was at least in part responsible for.

It didn't matter that by that time he had already been working for Maria Hill, trying to take down HYDRA, others were still paying the price for his mistakes.

_Four._ Thomas Nash, the fake Clairvoyant, whom he had shot to keep the real identity of the man behind the Centipede project a secret.

_Five. Six. Seven._ The two guards and Victoria Hand as they had been heading for the Fridge to lock up Garrett.

_Eight. Nine._ The two SHIELD agents in the building's elevator, who had only broken protocol and let them inside to save their lives a few moments earlier.

And even though they had taken out the rest of the facility with a potent sleeping gas, Ward knew that raiding the Fridge itself and freeing all the prisoners had probably caused more collateral damage than everything else he had done combined. They had freed murderers and super-powered psychopaths, while putting the most dangerous weapons on the planet into the hands of the biggest sociopath of them all, John Garrett.

He had even shown him where Coulson had locked up the gravitonium, something his former S.O. would have never found on his own, but while he had been worried about the consequences of that action, it had been the only way to make sure to get Ian Quinn back in the game after Garrett had stopped posing as the Clairvoyant. And if he had wanted to take HYDRA down, he had needed all the players out on the field again.

Ward was just glad that when he had temporarily rejoined his team at the Providence base, he hadn't been forced to add any of their names to his list. To see their reactions after his cover had been blown, and having to force Skye at gunpoint to decrypt the hard drive containing the team's research had been terrible enough, but he wasn't sure if he would have been able to sacrifice one of them at that point to keep them believing that he was HYDRA.

He had even gone back to treat Coulson's gunshot wound to the arm, to make sure the agent didn't bleed out, endangering his cover in the process, but looking back, Ward wasn't sure if he would make that same decision again. Not if it meant putting his mission at risk for one man, no matter how much he cared about him.

But even back then he had known that his attachment to his old team had been holding him back, and so a part of him had actually thought that things would become easier once his betrayal had come out and he had left the secret base and his friends behind, stealing the Bus in the process. He had thought that he would be able to focus more on further infiltrating HYDRA, but he hadn't anticipated how persistent Coulson and the others would be.

Not only had they managed to find the files on the original Deathlok project in one of Cybertek's offices, they had also tracked them to Havana, found the old SHIELD base they had been using there and had even located the plane.

Not that that last part had done the team any good, but it had thrown another wrench in Ward's plan to keep his friends out of harm's way as long as he had to appear loyal to HYDRA.

When Garrett had spotted Fitz and Simmons surveilling the Bus, the specialist had initially hoped that he would deem the two scientists too valuable to be harmed, but when Fitz had used the handheld EMP device, almost killing the older agent, he had instantly known that all bets would be off.

"Put down Fitz and Simmons!" That order had sent a sharp feeling of dread running up Ward's spine, leaving him breathless for a moment.

_Ten. Eleven. _

But despite his conviction to do whatever it took to remain Garrett's loyal right hand man, every fibre of him had protested against the mere idea of hurting the two innocent scientists.

"What? No, there's plenty of time. I won't leave you," he had argued, his expression probably betraying his reluctance.

"And I'm telling you to cross them off for me. It's not a weakness, is it?" Garrett's voice had been weak, but decisive, leaving no room for an objection.

"No." And so the specialist had stood back up and followed his two former team mates down into the lower parts of the Bus, where they had obviously just managed to escape the HYDRA agents that had been supposed to guard them.

They had tried to run away from him, but the plane had only so many hiding places and so they had finally locked themselves into a med pod like the one Skye had been lying in after getting shot.

The association alone had made his stomach clench painfully, but neither of the two scientists had seemed to be aware of her friend almost dying in a place like this as they, or at least Fitz, had tried to plead with him to abandon his loyalty to HYDRA and help them instead.

"Ward, please, I need to understand." And how much he had wished that he could have told him the truth, but no one had been allowed to know, and even if Ward had wanted to tell him, there hadn't been enough time, as he had been too busy trying to find a way to save the two young agents' lives.

He had known that it would be only a matter of minutes, or maybe just seconds, until more HYDRA agents would have found them and they would have been more than happy to finish the job if he hadn't by then. No matter what, there had been no way that Fitz and Simmons could have been save anywhere on the Bus, and this feeling of helplessness, along with the fact that Garrett had called them Ward's weakness, had brought back the memories from ten years ago, when he had been accepted into the academy and Garrett had ordered him to shoot his dog Buddy, just to make sure he would never get attached to anyone or anything ever again.

Back then, he had actually considered killing him for a moment, but ultimately hadn't done it, and instead fired a shot into the air to get the loyal animal to run off, in an attempt to save his life. But it had been a futile attempt, as Garrett had used his rifle to finish the job himself, reminding Ward that no matter what, his orders would always be carried out.

So, when he had looked at Fitz and Simmons, who had been staring back at him through the window in the door with fear in their eyes, he had known that the only way to save their lives, the only remote chance that they could survive, was to get them as far away from his boss as possible.

"You need to accept the truth, Fitz, he doesn't care about us, about anything." Simmons had always been brilliant, in fact one of the brightest people he had ever met, but just this once she had been so incredibly wrong and Ward had wanted nothing more than to tell her the truth. But he hadn't. Even as Fitz had continued to defend him, he had never let his HYDRA appearance waver, even though deep inside he had already been begging them for forgiveness for what he had been about to do.

"I know that you're a good person, Ward, and you can choose right now to be good. It's a choice," Fitz had told him, obviously still not able to believe that the man he considered to be one of his best friends had been a traitor all along. But it had been to no avail.

"I got my orders," Ward had replied stoically and when they had still refused to open the door, as he had known they would, he had stepped over to the control panel, activating the plane's unloading protocols, just as he had started to hear the door from the lab being forced open by the HYDRA agents who had been following the scientists earlier.

He had tried not to listen to Fitz and Simmons's shouts, begging for him to stop, but even though he had known that he had been giving them their best chance by dropping the pod into the ocean, given the plane's low speed and altitude, he had still felt like he had been about to murder two of the people most important to him.

_Ten. Eleven._

Two more deaths on his conscience.

After it had been done and he had sent the other HYDRA agents away again, Ward had taken out his phone to send a short text message to a number Agent Hill had given him months earlier, with the specific instruction only to call in an absolute emergency and with the warning that the number would go dark after that to avoid being traced back to SHIELD.

He hadn't even been sure if there had still been someone on the other end, as most of the organisation had fallen apart by then, but it had been the only option he had had left. The message hadn't been long, just the coordinates where he had dropped the pod and three words.

"Underwater. Send help!"

**To be continued…**


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: Sorry that this took so much longer than I had planned, but I just had to finish another chapter for "So Long" first. As always, please leave a review! There'll be cake!

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><p><strong>Whatever Price I'll Have To Pay<strong>

**Chapter 3**

"If the job was easy-"

John Garrett's last words before the GH325 Raina had just injected him with had taken effect and in a way even his final words, because a few seconds later, the man Ward had known all these years had been gone, replaced by an even more dangerous and definitely more crazy version of himself.

To see his former S.O. talking about 'feeling the universe' and drawing the same strange symbols Ward had seen all those months ago in that building in Belarus, hadn't exactly been very reassuring to the specialist, but it hadn't been until Garrett had stabbed a general of the US military with his own rip, that he had realised how far gone he had really been.

And it hadn't helped either that Coulson and the team had shown up on their doorstep once again, suggesting that they had found a way to track the Bus, rendering it useless as an escape vehicle, no matter how much Ward had wanted to keep it.

Ian Quinn and Raina had tried to jump ship at that point, realising that with SHIELD attacking the facility and their biggest ally losing his mind – or being 'connected', as Raina had put it – it had probably been best to get out of the heat, but Ward had made it very clear to them that their cooperation had not been over just yet.

If Quinn had wanted to continue his very lucrative partnership with HYDRA, Ward had insisted that he would have to help him make sure that Garrett didn't confront SHIELD just when he was the most vulnerable, despite his new incredible physical strength. And while Raina's talk about Skye's true nature had been kind of intriguing, in the end his need to keep her safe had prevailed and Ward had somehow managed to convince his C.O. to leave the Cybertek facility and only let Deathlok stay behind to slow down Coulson and his team, hoping that they would figure out the true nature of the 'Incentives Program' and shut it down, before any of them were hurt.

But saving John Garrett had only been the beginning.

Ward had always known that he had been his ticket into HYDRA, and even if his own loyalty had still been undisputed at that point, Garrett's contacts, established over the span of more than two decades had made him absolutely indispensable if he had wanted to get access to the higher levels of the organisation.

And so they had lain low for a while in one of the many safe houses Garrett had set up for himself over the years, but while the older agent had kept obsessing about his sudden new insight into the world, and had spent most of his time drawing more symbols on all the walls, Ward had tried his best to get him back on track and stir him towards HYDRA once more.

One day, after they had already been at the house for almost two weeks, he had been watching his boss for a while in silence, both confused and fascinated by his diligence at scraping the odd markings into the wall of the living room after having removed all the furniture from the room without so much as breaking a sweat.

Garrett had been using a knife that time, instead of the nail he had used on the glass door on the Bus, but Ward still hadn't understood why he hadn't just been using a pen. He had already offered him one, but Garrett had refused, arguing that there was also a physical aspect to the symbols instead of just a visual one, something he had obviously been surprised Ward hadn't realised immediately.

But when there had been no sign of him being done anytime soon, the specialist had finally addressed his former S.O., trying his best to keep his impatience out of his voice.

"John, I know that this work is important to you, but don't you think it's time that we get back out there? We're still a part of HYDRA, and even though I get that you've never really been a true believer, I don't think that we should abandon the cause now. Being a part of HYDRA has worked out great for both of us so far-"

"Symbiotic, really," Garrett had interrupted him, causing Ward to shut his eyes for a moment and take a deep breath, as he had been trying not to let his frustration show.

"Yes, exactly, but hiding away here like some fugitives, that's not very symbiotic, is it? After you were healed, you said that it was now time for me to decide what I want; that you would see that I get it. And what I want is to get out of this hole and do something useful again. You said what HYDRA is trying to achieve isn't just a coup, it's an uprising, and I want to be a part of that."

Garrett had still been facing the wall when he had finished his plea, but his hand had been still for what had felt like the first time in days, giving Ward hope that he hadn't been a completely lost cause.

"You're right, son. You helped me, you did everything I ever asked of you and I wouldn't even be alive if it weren't for you." The older agent had turned around at that point, looking at Ward with a more focused expression than he had seen in ages. "What I'm doing here, the things I can see now, all of that is so much bigger than HYDRA, but it's all connected. It doesn't matter which path we follow, we're all working towards the same goal now."

"And what goal is that?", Ward had asked, even though he hadn't even been sure if he had really wanted to know the answer.

"A new world, of course."

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><p>To say that HYDRA had been interested in integrating Garrett back into their ranks would have been an understatement. The organisation had always been focused on scientific progress, and to see the results of a miracle drug of alien origin had been more than enough incentive for them to welcome the agent back with open arms, despite his plans for an army of easily controlled super soldiers having been destroyed by Coulson and his team.<p>

Garrett had donated some of his blood for analysis and agreed to a few tests, with Ward always by his side to make sure that he wouldn't end up as one of HYDRA's many science projects.

But despite the specialist's initial concerns that too much encouragement could cause Garrett's mental condition to deteriorate even further, the new environment apparently had had the exact opposite effect. He had become more focused again, and while there had still been times when he had locked himself in his office, scratching the strange symbols into glass board after glass board that had been provided for him, the rest of the time Garrett had been almost back to his old self, intent on helping HYDRA to finally achieve the goal they had been working towards for so long.

To control the world.

And Ward had been right beside him the entire time, his loyal second-in-command, making himself familiar with HYDRA's infrastructure, resources and projects, biding his time until the right moment, until he had gathered enough intel to finally bring his mission to an end.

When Maria Hill had first asked him to infiltrate HYDRA, the plan had been to find out their agenda and to expose all their agents within SHIELD, to free the agency of the corruption, but of course when project 'Insight' had turned out to be a mass-murdering plan for world domination that had only barely been stopped by Captain America, Natasha Romanoff, Director Fury and Agent Hill herself, everything had changed.

Even while SHIELD had still been intact, Ward had only ever had contact with Hill once, aside from his briefing before joining Coulson's team, to ask her on how to proceed when they had been getting closer to revealing the Clairvoyant's true identity. She had ordered him to do everything in his power to prevent that from happening, to maintain Garrett's cover under all circumstances, finally leading to him shooting Thomas Nash instead, just as Garrett had planned for him to do.

But except from that one time, he had never tried to reach out to Director Fury's second-in-command, knowing that there had been HYDRA agents everywhere and every contact between them would have put his mission at risk.

And after SHIELD had been gone, he hadn't even been sure if there had still been anyone left to reach out to. Sure, Maria Hill had given him the order to go undercover in the first place, but after she had gone to work for Tony Stark, he hadn't been sure if she would still have had his back if he had needed her to. Not to mention the fact that she had had a small army of agents from pretty much every agency out there following her around, surveilling her every move.

Ward had known that Coulson had started to rebuilt SHIELD, after having failed to track down him and Garrett, but of course contacting him hadn't been an option either, at least not until the final moment when he had gotten all the pieces in place and had been ready to take Hydra down. Until then he had been on his own, making his own calls, with nobody to answer to except his own conscience.

A conscience that at some point had taken on a very familiar form as he had once again found himself torn between following his morals and what he had felt had been needed to achieve his mission.

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><p>He and a small team of HYDRA agents had been ordered to break into a military research facility, where the government had been studying the program, or rather the algorithm, Dr. Zola had created for HYDRA and that nearly had been responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent people, just because it had deemed them a threat to the organisation.<p>

Of course, with the helicarriers gone, there hadn't really been a risk of HYDRA committing mass murder anytime soon, and so, while Ward hadn't known what they had wanted with the algorithm, he had instantly realised, as soon as he had been given the order, that this could have been the one chance he had been waiting for.

If this algorithm had been able to identify threats to HYDRA simply by analysing their history, then it surely would also have been able to identify HYDRA agents, if given the right data. All he had needed to do had been to get his hands on the algorithm and to find a computer expert willing and able to reprogram it.

But to do all that he had first needed to get past the soldiers and technicians standing in his way, men and women who had just been doing their job, even fighting for the right side, but who still could have sabotaged his entire mission if he hadn't managed to get past them.

Ward had done his best to minimise casualties during their attack, had ordered the men under his command to use dendrotoxin grenades to take out as many of their opponents as possible, but in the end, his efforts hadn't been good enough as he had realised too late that he had completely underestimated the scientists working on the project, who had apparently been more willing to destroy all of their research than to let it fall into the hands of HYDRA.

Making his way into the lab, he had spotted a young Afro-American woman standing in front of one of the computers, typing on the keyboard furiously.

"Step away from the computer," he had ordered her calmly, his weapon drawn, but she had spun around to him, grabbing a gun she must have had lying beside her and fired at him, forcing Ward to get into cover.

"You seriously think I'll let you take this? I know what HYDRA tried to do with it last time, so you can bet I'm not going to let you get away with the algorithm."

As he hadn't had any idea what exactly the woman had been doing on the computer, Ward had known that he couldn't have risked letting her continue. He had been pressed for time and the fact that the scientist had been armed hadn't made the situation any easier either.

That had been the first time he had heard the all too familiar voice beside him, reminding him of the person he had always wanted to be.

"_You don't have to do this, Ward, there has to be another way."_ Skye had been standing to his right, or rather his memory of her, looking up at him with pleading eyes.

"_I know you, you're not a heartless killer, so please, don't shoot her." _She had been looking so out of place in the almost sterile surrounding of the military facility with her blue flannel shirt and her soft brown locks falling over her shoulders.

He had leaned his head back against the wall, closing his eyes tightly for a moment, hoping that the young woman would be gone once he opened them again, but to no avail. Skye had still been standing there, trying to reach him.

"_I know what you're doing is important, but that woman is innocent. How can you claim that you're one of the good guys, Ward, if you kill innocent people for your mission?" _

At that point he had actually smiled briefly, probably one more sign that he had slowly been going insane, and had turned to face Skye, his expression showing a mixture of guilt, sadness, but also acceptance.

"I _don't_." After that, his hallucination of Skye, or whatever it had been, hadn't said another word and had only watched as he had turned back to the lab and shot the young scientist in the head before she had had the chance to destroy the algorithm.

_Ten._

**To be continued…**


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: I know this is a pretty unusual way to tell a story, to write everything in past perfect, but I'm trying to be as much in Ward's head as possible without actually making it POV, so I ended up writing "Whatever It Is You Are Called Upon To Do" this way and adopted the same style now for the sequel. Any feedback on that would be really appreciated, as well as anything else that runs through your minds of course!

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><p><strong>Whatever Price I'll Have To Pay<strong>

**Chapter 4**

Getting hold of the algorithm had been a massive step forward in his fight against HYDRA, but despite of that Ward hadn't really been able to enjoy his success, not after what he had been forced to do for it and after having seen his own conscience glaring daggers at him in the form of the woman he loved.

Once the mission at the military base had been over, his hallucination of Skye had been gone again, but the look of pure disappointment on her face had stayed with him just as vividly as the sound of the gunshot that had ended the life of the scientist who had simply made the mistake of getting in his way.

But while the flight back had been mostly quiet, except from the occasional banter between the agents who had been a part of the attack, congratulating each other on a successful job, once they had returned to their HYDRA base, he had been forced to suppress his guilt once more, especially in front of Garrett, who had come to greet them personally.

"Good job, boys!", he had welcomed them with one of his typical grins plastered on his face. "I hear they put up a good fight," he had begun, only for Ward to finish his sentence.

"But we fought better. Don't worry, we came across nothing we couldn't handle and I even brought you a souvenir." He had held up the flash drive containing the algorithm, one of two copies he had made, with a carefree smile on his face, just as if he had still been Garret's mindless follower, eager to please his boss.

The older agent had even patted him on the shoulder like he had been praising a trained dog, reminding Ward once more of how manipulated he had been all those years without even realising it.

"Excellent, the guys upstairs will be very happy about this."

"'Upstairs', I thought you were upstairs?", Ward had asked casually as they had started walking towards the elevator to get to Garrett's office, as always jumping at every opportunity to learn more about HYDRA's hierarchy.

"Oh, trust me, I'm very high up, but you know how it is with these kinds of organisations, there's always someone a few steps above you. But honestly, who wants that kind of pressure, right? You and me, we're free spirits, we're not meant to be held down by firm structures and while I guess that we're doing pretty alright at the moment, I wouldn't even want to get a promotion. That's not the place the universe has intended for me. There's just five people in charge of HYDRA, and even if they offered, I wouldn't want to be the sixth."

Five people leading all of HYDRA. It had been the first time Ward had ever heard about them, and if Garrett had known the consequences of his passing remark, he would have put a bullet in his former rookie's head then and there.

But of course he hadn't suspected a thing and Ward had known better than to push the subject.

"So, what does HYDRA even want with that thing, now that the helicarriers are gone?" He had looked at the flash drive now in Garrett's hand, a small frown on his face.

"Well, even if it's not as easy anymore to take our enemies out, it's still good to know who they are, isn't it? And besides, that algorithm belongs to us. Dr. Zola created it and he used to work for the Red Skull himself, so I guess some people here at HYDRA are pretty sentimental about it." He had laughed loudly at that point, causing Ward to look at him in surprise just as they had stepped into the elevator and he had pushed the button for the twentieth floor, where Garrett's office had been located.

"Oh, I was just thinking how much that actually reminds me of Phil with his bunch of SHIELD collectibles. You know, for his fortieth birthday, I gave him this old walkie-talkie wristwatch that I had found in a pretty ancient SHIELD storage facility I had raided for HYDRA, and for a moment there I actually thought he was going to have a heart attack. It was like seeing a kid on Christmas morning, he was so happy about it. Apparently they only made twenty of those things, but to be honest, if I had known that, I probably wouldn't have given it to him. You know me, I'm not exactly the most careful guy, but I wouldn't have wanted to take the risk that he could have traced it back to the raid. Not that he did, of course, he probably never would have suspected me of working against SHIELD."

"At least not until you slipped up and blew your cover, right?", Ward had replied with a smirk, trying to maintain a light-hearted conversation, even if just the mention of his old team had made the guilt inside of him flare up again.

"Well, that makes two of us, doesn't it?", Garrett had answered in return, alluding to Ward's mission to have Skye decrypt the hard drive with the team's data on it, and how he had almost screwed that up by being too careless. A mistake he had vowed to himself never to make again.

"Alright, you got me there. But that mission was going to blow my cover anyway and I still got it done, so in the end I guess it doesn't really matter how it happened." The doors of the elevator had opened at that point, giving way to a brightly lit, extremely posh looking hallway.

Both agents had stepped outside and headed towards Garrett's office, while Ward had marvelled once again how different this HYDRA base had been in contrast to what he had been expecting from a terrorist organisation supposedly on the run. But he had become focused again instantly as his former S.O. had continued.

"I suppose you're right, though I still sometimes wonder why you left them all alive that day."

"I told you why I-", Ward had begun to defend himself, only for Garrett to interrupt him immediately.

"Yes, yes, you explained why you didn't kill them, and believe me, I understand that. One last act of kindness to sever the bond, to cover any debts owed, but you have to forgive me if that still kind of bugged me. But, as it turns out, you actually might have done us all a favour, even when you failed to kill your scientist friends on the plane."

"I dumped them into the Atlantic," Ward had replied, doing his best to put a convincing scowl on his face at the memory, "how was I supposed to know that they would find a way to survive that."

Garrett had actually laughed slightly at that, obviously convinced that Ward had been trying his best to follow his orders and kill Fitz and Simmons.

As they had reached the older agent's office, Garrett had stepped inside first allowing for the slightest flicker of uncertainty to pass over Ward's features, as he had started to get worried about what his boss had been talking about and what he had meant by him doing HYDRA a favour.

"It's alright, son, as I said, it was probably for the better. I'll admit I was pissed when that kid almost took me out with that joybuzzer, but now I believe that it was all meant to be. Only that way did I become desperate enough to let Raina inject me with that miracle drug and look at me now, I've found my place in the universe and I've never been better in my life."

Even in hindsight, Ward was still impressed that he had actually managed to maintain a completely straight face at that point, despite the million objections that had been passing through his mind.

"But even if we leave all that aside, I believe now that killing Agents Fitz and Simmons at the time would have been a mistake. They are far too valuable to simply take out, at least not without making them another offer."

His insides had been turning to ice at these words, but even if he had already known the answer, Ward had still needed to ask anyway.

"Sir, what are you saying?"

"I'm saying that I want you to kidnap Fitz and Simmons so I can turn them into HYDRA assets. Well, and if they don't comply, I guess you'll get another chance to put them down after all."

**To be continued…**


End file.
